The frightful accident at the Surrey Gardens last Sunday evening
is a painful comment on the course of proceedings which led to it. In this country there is always a demand for a certain kind of preacher, of whom Whitfield is considered the prototype ; Rowland Hill partly filled the post ; and Mr. Spur- geon succeeds after a considerable dearth of remarkable men. His chapel will not hold his congregation ; his " deacons " are to build him a larger chapel ; and meanwhile they get him a pulpit first in Exeter Hall and next in the Surrey Gardens Concert- room. Mr. Spurgeon becomes not only a missionary but a lion : our Sabbath always occasions a great appreciation of any amuse- ment licensed for that day ; and the concert-room fills as if Jenny Lind were to sing there. But there is not the same harmony in the motley assemblage, nor the same arrangements for keeping order ; a random or a wicked word of alarm is• uttered ; the congregation rushes out in wild tumult ; several people are killed and many maimed. Able to collect a host to listen to his quaint and vehement dealing of damnation round the land., Mr. Spur- geon proved quite unequal to control the multitude when it grew unruly : he did his best, but at last succumbed to the pain and agitation of the hour, while, amid the hideous and mortal con- fusion, some of his office-bearers were endeavouring to collect contributions to indemnify them for " the expenses." They have since expiated that conjunction of money-gathering with death and mutilation, by bestowing the money on the sufferers or their friends ; but no such afterthought will redeem the damnatory effect of the scene in the concert-room made conventicle.
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